


Sublime

by hyphyp



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: F/F, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-15
Updated: 2019-03-15
Packaged: 2019-11-18 09:05:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18117644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyphyp/pseuds/hyphyp
Summary: Fiona and Rhys vanish. Sasha hears a voice.





	Sublime

**Author's Note:**

> for athenasaspis on tumblr

Not even a full cycle passes after the Vault of the Traveler is opened before Sasha hears the voice.

It’s just a whisper, barely audible at all, and she looks instinctively behind her for the source. But the room is empty save for Vaughn, sleeping with his head slumped forward onto the map. She approaches, eyes the spot near Overlook that has gained a new water feature thanks to his drool, and dismisses the voice. Maybe she needs to sleep, too. Maybe it’s just her own voice, telling her what she already knows:

“Come find me.”

‘I’m looking, Fiona,’ Sasha says back. ‘I’m doing everything I can.’

She clenches her fists, digging her nails into her palms, and then lets go all at once. She turns the light out as she exits the room, leaving Vaughn alone with all the accusing whispers of his own.

 

\--

 

The next time she hears it, it’s louder, crisper, with enough tone and inflection that Sasha recognizes it as unfamiliar. It’s still tinny, still a little distant, but it’s a voice. It’s someone speaking words.

“Come find me,” it says weakly from near her shoulder, and Sasha jerks back, as if shocked.

“What is it?” Yvette asks, turning from her conversation with Dr. Tannis.

“Nothing,” Sasha says. “I just thought I heard–”

Dr. Tannis peers at her with wide, unblinking eyes, the beginnings of a knowing smile curling her lips. Sasha scowls.

‘I’m not like you,’ she wants to say. ‘I’m not obsessed.’

“Never mind,” she says instead. “It was just a fly.”

“Buzz, buzz,” Dr. Tannis mocks. “If you’re not going to be useful, do me a favor and stop clogging my thinking space.”

Sasha lets the door slam shut behind her and clenches her fists again, this time to keep the trembling out of her limbs. She doesn’t know if she’s more angry or afraid. It’s been several cycles now since Fiona and Rhys vanished and she’s felt both in immense proportions and almost nothing else. Whatever took them took something out of her, too – it hollowed her out, left her empty, and then let it fill to the brim with ichor.

 

\--

 

The third time is crystal clear.

Athena has taken her out into the highlands to do some practice shooting.

“I already shoot just fine,” Sasha had snapped at the suggestion.

“No, you pull the trigger,” Athena said. She looked away, an awkward softness to her face, that look she gets when she wants to say something but doesn’t quite know how. “If you don’t ground yourself now, it’ll be harder later. When my sister –”

She stopped abruptly. Sasha felt her shoulders slump and she kicked childishly at the dirt, feeling both resentful and contrite. It’s easier to have Athena angry at you – she always seems to be angry about something – but the quiet sadness, the empathy is worse.

“Okay, let’s go shooting,” Sasha relented. “You can teach me how to use a rifle.”

Athena clapped her on the shoulder and they headed out, into the open, rolling plains, green and vibrant and tousled by the soft breeze. With Hyperion gone, it’s almost peaceful. You can close your eyes and taste the salt from the sea, smell the wet dirt under your feet. It almost feels like a place where things can grow and live and thrive.

“Come find me,” a voice says directly in Sasha’s ear.

She starts, blinks, and then clambers up out of her position hidden among the rocks. Athena’s voice –pixelated through the ECHO – crackles to life at her hip.

“Why did you move?” Athena asks.

Instead of responding, Sasha slings the sniper rifle up over her shoulder and grabs her pack, picking her way down the hillside toward the meadow with its sharp cliff edge.

“Please,” the voice says.

It’s a girl’s voice.

“I’ll be right back,” Sasha says into the ECHO, and then shuts it off, cutting off Athena’s frustrated reprimand.

She doesn’t know how she knows, but she does. Her feet move of their own accord, padding swiftly toward the cliff and then toward a narrow, haphazard trail that leads down to the water. Maybe the animals use it to get up and down. Maybe some long-gone Pandoran had carved it out. Maybe, before that, the Eridians. It’s barely there, anyway, and Sasha clings to exposed roots and curving boulder edges and coughs as dust falls in her eyes and mouth as she carefully tracks her way down.

There’s a cave entrance right at the very bottom. The ocean water laps at it, teases the lip, waves already broken and softened by enormous pillars of rock that rise out of the water further out. Sasha has to bend slightly to fit inside the natural tunnel.

The light is dim at first, and then completely dark, but still she keeps moving, heart pounding but sure of itself. Just a bit further. Just a bit further.

The pitch-black breaks under soft purple fingers of light and Sasha emerges in an echoing cavern. The walls glitter with purple crystals and a pool of shimmering liquid eridium stretches out before her. It’s unbroken, totally calm. Like a mirror.

“Whoa,” Sasha breathes.

She swallows and tries not to think about eridium poisoning.

“Are you in here?” she calls.

The cavern catches her voice and echoes it back, sends it bouncing from corner to corner, stretches it out until it’s thin and soft and it settles like dust into silence again. There’s a pause. And then a ripple.

A girl emerges from the pool. She crawls up onto her arms, then her knees, eridium cascading off her bare shoulders in waterfalls and rivulets. Her tattooed arm glows and pulses and her whole body shakes.

“Are you okay?” Sasha asks.

“Thank you,” the girl says instead of answering.

She stumbles forward weakly, as if walking for the first time, and Sasha takes a step forward to help her, but stops at the edge of the eridium pool. Still, she reaches out her arms.

“Grab onto me,” she says.

The girl looks up. Her face is round and soft, but her eyes are deep and shadowed with exhaustion. They widen in surprise. Her lips part soundlessly, and then she smiles.

“Thank you,” she says again, and grabs Sasha’s outstretched hand.

Her hand is warm. Sasha’s not sure why she expected any different. It’s warm and soft and she has long fingers that curl around Sasha’s in a sturdy but gentle grip.

“How…” Sasha begins, and then looks away, suddenly embarrassed by the girl’s nude form. “I heard you.”

“Mmm,” the girl says. “Sorry. You were the only one I could reach. It’s because you were close to me.”

“Close?”

“In death,” she says with an apologetic smile.

“Oh,” Sasha says, and remembers the dark and the cold and the terror. “Are you saying you were – are dead? Are you a zombie or something? Are you gonna try to eat my brains?”

The girl laughs.

“No. I don’t know what I am. Lucky, I think.”

She’s still gripping Sasha’s hand and, through it, Sasha can feel her shaking. It’s like this girl is barely being held together by her skin, like her bones are sticks and string kept whole by little more than a wish. At any moment she might fly into shattered pieces, into drops of eridium, into mist. Sasha closes her hand around the girl’s and gently grips back.

“I’m Sasha,” she says.

“I’m –” the girl begins, and then suddenly stops. “I was Angel, before.”

“Before?”

“Yes, but now…” the girl trails off, eyes dancing to the side and then back to Sasha’s again. “A new life needs a new name. You can call me Felicity.”

“Felicity,” Sasha repeats. Something in her blooms and shudders, like awe, or hope. “Did you…want to get out of this cave, Felicity? Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice and all, but up in Sanctuary we have showers. And pants.”

Felicity beams, and Sasha leads her hand in hand back out into the light.


End file.
